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‘Mass sex assaults’ by refugees in Frankfurt on New Year’s Eve were made up – police

2.2017

Reports of mass sexual assaults on women in Frankfurt on New Year’s Eve allegedly committed by dozens of drunken refugees, and which initially appeared in Germany’s Bild newspaper, were made up and are “completely baseless,” police said.

The story about mass sexual assaults by refugees in the Fressgass Street area in downtown Frankfurt was reported by Bild earlier in February. The article has since been taken down.

One of the victims, Irina A., 27, told Bild: “They [the migrants] grabbed me under the skirt, between my legs, my breasts, everywhere….More and more of these guys came. Their hands were everywhere,” the Express said, quoting the original report.

Her words were supported by Jan Mai, a local pub owner, who said that a mob of Arabs was “highly aggressive, there was shouting and hand gestures.”

“When I came in, the whole place was full with a group of around 50 Arabs. They did not speak German, drank our guests' drinks and danced towards them. The women asked me for help because they were being attacked. The mood changed completely,” he told Bild, as cited by the Express.

It was claimed the migrants came from a refugee center in Hesse state, where Frankfurt is located, the Local said, citing the original report.

Police started an investigation into the alleged incidents and on Tuesday released a report stating that the allegations of mass sexual assaults had been invented.

“There were no massive mob-like attacks by masses of refugees in Fressgass [Street]. The allegations were groundless,” police said.

In the article several people “reported about sexual assaults, bodily injuries, thefts and extremely aggressive behavior of masses of refugees. Media interest in these descriptions was very high. The police were not aware of these circumstances,” the statement said.

According to police, “interviews with alleged witnesses, guests and employees led to major doubts with the version of events that had been presented.

“One of the alleged victims was not even in Frankfurt at the time the allegations are said to have taken place,” the report said.

The Bild editorial team quickly apologized “for this inaccurate reporting and the accusations against those concerned.”

“This reporting does not correspond in any way to the journalistic standards of Bild,” the newspaper said in a statement.

Bild said that the alleged witnesses – the pub owner and his staff– talked of mass sexual assaults to other media outlets.

“We apologize for our own work. I’ll shortly announce what Bild will do about it,” online editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt tweeted.

The Bild story appeared to prompt comparisons with the Cologne attacks committed on New Year’s Eve in 2015. Back then, groups of North African men sexually assaulted hundreds of women in the city.

A German police report from November revealed the latest figures on the crimes committed on New Year’s Eve 2015 across Germany: 881 sexual offenses involving over 1,231 women. The victims were almost all young women.

Apart from Germany, similar sex attacks allegedly took place on New Year’s Eve that year in Sweden, Austria, Finland and Switzerland.

A man interviewed by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News this week, who was identified in an on-screen caption as a “Swedish Defense and National Security Advisor,” turns out to be entirely unknown in his native country, with no connections to either the nation’s defense or security services.

As the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported on Friday, Nils Bildt, who echoed President Donald Trump’s debunked claim that immigrants from Muslim-majority nations had driven a rise in violent crime in Sweden, has no known expertise in national security, and has not lived in his homeland since 1994. Officials at the Swedish Defense Ministry and Foreign Office told the newspaper they had never heard of this “unknown Bildt.”

His only claim to fame appears to be the fact that his father, Sven Tolling, is “well know in Swedish equestrian circles,” according to Dagens Nyheter. How he came to be presented by Fox News as an expert in a segment broadcast on Thursday night remains a mystery — as does why he changed his name from Tolling to Bildt after he emigrated from Sweden.

Nevertheless, when Bildt was asked by O’Reilly to respond to comments from Anne-Sofie Näslund, a U.S. correspondent for the newspaper Expressen who disputed the Fox News host’s claim that a recent rise in violent crime in Sweden was caused by an “influx” of refugees from Muslim nations, he confidently dismissed her fact-driven argument.

As Näslund noted, there is no evidence in Swedish government statistics that immigrants from Muslim majority nations (who make up all of 1.5 percent of the population) are in any way associated with the increased number of shooting deaths, which peaked at all of 33 in 2015. (The United States has more than 30,000 shooting deaths each year.)

Bildt, whose adopted last name is the same as that of Sweden’s former prime minister, Carl Bildt, a relentless critic of Donald Trump, told Dagens Nyheter by email that he is “an independent analyst based in the USA.”

It was a Fox News producer, Nils Bildt said, who made the decision to give him the official-sounding title of “Swedish Defense and National Security Advisor.” “I had no personal control over what title they chose,” Bildt wrote.

Näslund, who had been forced to listen to Bildt dismiss her fact-based argument out of hand, pointed out on Twitter that the Swedish immigrant to the United States who claimed that immigrants to Sweden are violent was reportedly arrested in Virginia for committing a violent crime in 2014.

In his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Trump reiterated his claim that immigration from Muslim-majority countries had compromised security in Sweden, even though the Fox News segment that he cited as evidence earlier in the week was widely debunked as inaccurate in the Swedish media.

The U.S. deployed its largest non-nuclear weapon in Afghanistan on Thursday, targeting tunnels used by regional affiliates of the Islamic State. The 21,600-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapon — nicknamed the "mother of all bombs" — is said to have killed dozens of Afghan militants and destroyed three tactical caves. It was the first time the MOAB had been used in combat.

While President Trump on Thursday dodged a direct question asking if he'd authorized the MOAB's use, he later called the mission "very successful." Afghan officials are still evaluating the detonation's effect, but on Friday morning's Fox & Friends, the network's hosts saw fit to celebrate the weapon's use with the dulcet tunes of country singer Toby Keith. Keith's song "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" played over the Pentagon's footage of the MOAB's landing, prompting host Ainsley Earhardt to proclaim: "That's the red, white, and blue." Watch below.

Apparently IS leader al-Baghdadi doesn't stay dead. US killed him back in 2014 and Russia killed him this week LOL

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ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly killed by US airstrikes

Sep 6, 2014

Thousands of social media users are distributing an unverified photo which claims to show the body of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after he was purportedly killed by US air strikes after three senior members of ISIS, including an aide to al-Baghdadi were also killed by US air strikes. The death of the three senior members and aide to al-Baghdadi were confirmed by a senior Iraqi security official when interviewed by NBC News on Thursday.

The strike on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul killed Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, an aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as an explosives operative and the military leader of nearby Tal Afar, the source said on condition of anonymity. Al Arabiya cited the Iraqi Defense Ministry saying Baghdadi’s aide had been killed.

Pentagon Spokesman Col. Steve Warren could not confirm the deaths and said ISIS leaders had not been targeted. But he added that if ISIS leaders were embedded “inside troop formations they are likely to be killed.” The U.S. has been carrying out airstrikes across north Iraq after the brutal terrorists of ISIS gained ground in a murderous sweep in June.

A number of news outlets and websites have published the unverified photo and news about the death of al-Baghdadi by US airstrikes. IraqiNews.com has been unable to verify the photo and claim that al-Baghdadi was killed.

Russia's military says it may have killed IS leader; West, Iraq skeptica
Sat Jun 17, 2017

Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were skeptical.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from a mosque in Mosul in 2014, after leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq.

If the report does prove true, it would be one of the biggest blows yet to Islamic State, which is trying to defend its shrinking territory against an array of forces backed by regional and global powers in both Syria and Iraq.

But in the absence of independent confirmation, some U.S. officials said U.S. agencies were skeptical of the report. Several Iraqi security officials said Iraq was doubtful as well.

"His death has been reported so often that you have to be cautious till a formal Daesh statement comes," a European security official said, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

U.S. Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We have no information to corroborate those reports."

A senior Trump administration official noted “a number of infirmities” in the reports, which have given U.S. officials reason to question their accuracy.

“Some of those infirmities suggested that this happened at the end of May and that there were upwards of 300 or more soldiers killed in that strike,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

“A strike of that size and that claim that would have happened that long ago without any knowledge is something that made me curious,” the official added.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on its Facebook page that it was checking information that Baghdadi was killed in the strike on the outskirts of Raqqa in Syria, launched after Russia received intelligence about a meeting of Islamic State leaders.

"On May 28, after drones were used to confirm the information on the place and time of the meeting of IS leaders, between 00:35 and 00:45, Russian air forces launched a strike on the command point where the leaders were located," the statement said.

"According to the information which is now being checked via various channels, also present at the meeting was Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated as a result of the strike," the ministry said.

US media write 449% more news stories about 'Muslim' terrorist attacks than others

The news media are making Americans afraid of Muslims.

2017-07-05

Data suggests that the U.S. media is playing an active role in making Americans disproportionately afraid of Muslims.

Terror attacks perpetrated by individuals claiming to be Muslim get an average of 449 percent more news stories than attacks perpetrated by non-Muslims, according to research by academics at Georgia State University. This means attacks associated with Muslims get 4.5 times more media coverage than those perpetrated by white supremacists or others.

"This stereotyping reinforces cultural narratives about what and who should be feared," the authors of the study write.
"By covering terrorist attacks by Muslims dramatically more than other incidents, media frame this type of event as more prevalent. Based on these findings, it is no wonder that Americans are so fearful of radical Islamic terrorism," they add.

The researchers analyzed media coverage from CNN and U.S. newspapers from 2011 to 2015, looking at 2,413 news articles. They looked specifically at terror-related news coverage, finding a significantly disproportionate focus on attacks perpetrated by people associating themselves with Islam.

While only 12.4 percent of terror attacks in the five-year period were carried out by individuals associating themselves with Islam, these attacks received 41.4 percent of terror-related media coverage.

In fact, 20 percent of all the U.S' terror-related media coverage focused on the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The attack was perpetrated by two Chechen-American brothers, allegedly motivated by extremist Islamist beliefs. Three people died as a result of the attack.

Conversely, coverage of a 2012 attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, perpetrated by a white man, received just 3.8 percent of terror-related media coverage. Six people were killed in the attack.

Ironically, U.S. President Donald Trump has accused the media of ignoring attacks perpetrated by individuals identifying as Muslims. However, this study shows that his assertion is gravely inaccurate, and the media actually neglect covering terror attacks perpetrated by White supremacists and others not associated with Islam.

"When President Trump asserted that the media does not cover some terrorist attacks enough, it turns out that he was correct,” the researchers say in the report. "However, his assertion that attacks by Muslim perpetrators received less coverage is unsubstantiated."

While Trump and the U.S. media have focused attention on so-called Muslim terrorists, white supremacist terrorists actually pose a major threat to national security, but they are often brushed aside or overlooked.

"Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face,” the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security reported, according to Newsweek.

Between 2002 and early 2016, individuals associated with white supremacist groups were responsible for more terrorist attacks and more deaths in the U.S. than individuals associating themselves with Islamist extremists.

In January 2009, a Melbourne "cleric" known as Abu Hamza had his face splashed across the front page of the Herald Sun. The headline above his image read: "Muslim cleric blasts Aussies on gambling, booze" and in huge letters "YOU'RE ALL DRUNKS".

The trigger was some YouTube recordings that had been made six years earlier. It must have been a slow news day.
Not reported was that this allegedly radical cleric (whose real name was Samir Mohtadi) had been the prosecution witness in the Benbrika case in 2006.

As the then editor of Crikey, Jonathan Green, wrote: "He became a key Crown witness in the Benbrika case and gave evidence about a meeting he had with Benbrika in 2004 in which he said to Benbrika that he had heard Benbrika was planning a terrorist attack in Australia.

Benbrika denied it. Mohtadi said he would go to the government if he got wind of any plan."

The fact is that major terror plots have been thwarted and prosecution cases succeeded thanks to information from ordinary Muslims. ASIO, the AFP and the Commonwealth DPP know this all too well. So do state law-enforcement authorities.
Muslim "dobbers" know their loved ones and friends have just as much chance as anyone of being killed or maimed in a terrorist attack.

Australian woman Dr Gill Hicks lost both her legs in the 2005 London bombings. Twenty-year-old Shahara Islam, an English bank clerk of Bangladeshi heritage, lost her life.

Our security agencies have been begging our politicians to calm the rhetoric down. They know better than anyone that words matter and that what political leaders say can make the work of police and prosecutors that much harder.

Sadly, certain sections of our media are making the job even harder by reinforcing the narrative of groups like Islamic State and convincing Muslims that they just don't belong.

Condescending cultural warriors are happy to marginalise 500,000 Australians who tick the "Muslim" box on their census forms. In an editorial dated October 6, The Australian said: "when attacks such as this happen the broad Islamic community has a choice. It can do its utmost to help police prevent extremism or it can retreat into a defensive insularity". Tell that to Samir Mohtadi.

The irony is that the same newspaper editorialised on July 24, 2008 that heavy reporting of child sex abuse allegations against Catholic priests by the ABC and Fairfax during the Pope's tour would be an affront to World Youth Day pilgrims and ordinary Catholics.

So it's OK to patronise one faith community over terrorism but it's not OK to report abuses taking place within a preferred religious hierarchy. Of course, out in the real world, Muslims and Catholics and Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs and others of faith and no faith are horrified by any form of violence or abuse in their communities.

After the tragic events at Parramatta, our political leaders are working hard to mend bridges with various communities. Our allegedly conservative media outlets now have a choice. Do they report the facts? Or do they allow their sectarian prejudices to marginalise these communities even more that? Do they wish to work in Australia's interests or the interests of Islamic State?

The New York Times Gives Ex-Blackwater CEO Erik Prince Free Advertising

It's 'incredible' that the New York Times gave former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince editorial space to suggest letting private mercenaries lead the war in Afghanistan, says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

biography

Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy Lawrence Wilkerson's last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02). Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army. During that time, he was a member of the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College (1987 to 1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired from active service in 1997 as a colonel, and began work as an advisor to General Powell. He has also taught national security affairs in the Honors Program at the George Washington University. He is currently working on a book about the first George W. Bush administration.

Transcript

LARRY WILKERSON: Well, we can't fight wars anymore without contractors. That's the sad state of the all-volunteer force and the number of people we actually have in the land forces, in particular, of the military. But I recall what Colin Powell told me a few years ago when one of the new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff had just called him and asked him, what would be the first couple of things he would do were he chairman again? And Colin didn't hesitate and said, "I'd see how many people I have on private contract, and I'd fire half of them. And then I'd look at the other half for potential firing of them."
In other words, DOD has no idea where billions, perhaps even larger than that, dollars are going in terms of private contractors, what they're paying them, what they're doing, where they're operating, and so forth. But the bottom line is, because of the size of the military today, you can't do war without contractors in the war zone. But that certainly doesn't mean you need to go the next step and turn the war over to them exclusively.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Now, you teach in this area at the university, and also you've taught at the military academy. What is the take on the part of the military in terms of using contractors? Or is this a false dichotomy? Are they all merged at this point when the U.S. considers war in countries like Afghanistan?

LRRY WILKERSON: Oh, I think the professional military looks at contractors as a necessary evil in terms of the size of the military and its need to free up troops, therefore, to be able to shoulder the burden of the military, fighting, in other words. And that's cooking, that's washing clothes, that's doing the kinds of things that the military is relieved of having to do by having these contractors. But that's not out there fighting for them. That's not out there killing for them.

There's a lot of problems in that with the professional military, which you just suggested. There's jealousy, for example, in the fact that maybe that private's getting paid $30,000 a year, and that private contractor's getting paid upwards of $120,000, $130,000 a year. There's also the difference in law prevailing over contractors at war, as it were, and military at war. There's also the difference in jobs that are handled by the military as opposed to jobs that are handled by the contractors.

And I find it really ... I was almost laughing reading Erik Prince's supposed excursion into history, talking about Claire Chennault and the Flying Tigers and so forth. That is an utterly ridiculous comparison. It shows Erik Prince up for what he is.

Claire Chennault and the Flying Tigers and those brave young men who flew war planes over to Britain in the beginning of World War II, and who actually went over and flew in the Royal Air Force for Britain in the Battle of Britain, they were defending the United States of America against a heinous enemy that threatened to topple us all. And they were the leading element of Franklin Roosevelt's ability to try and understand and get the American people to understand that we might be fighting a two-front war. We didn't want China to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan, and we certainly didn't want Britain to collapse. That was an utterly ridiculous historical analogy that Erik Prince tried to draw. His people are no Claire Chennaults, and they're not the boys that flew those airplanes for the British in the Battle of Britain.

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Now, Larry, since President Trump made the speech last week, there's been a lot of talk about the increase of troops from what it is reported now, from 8,400 to around 12,400 troops. And also the fact that he didn't put an end date. I know you talked to Paul Jay about this when you guys went live last week on this. But give us a sense of what this kind of troop increment as well as this not putting a deadline on ending this war means for us.

LARRY WILKERSON: Well, it's all political for President Trump, of course. It's to differentiate him from President Obama, and to demonstrate to the American people, such as those that are still on his side. I saw the polls yesterday, they're getting even lower and lower. He's gonna rival the congress pretty soon with single-digit poll ratings.

But what it is, it's to say: I'm smarter than President Obama 'cause I don't give timelines and I don't give dates certain and I don't give numbers out, and so forth and so on. That might be smart in an operational professional military sense. Sometimes in a political sense it makes no rhyme or reason at all, though. In this case I think we're talking about, is we're talking about a tactical situation where the United States wants to look, and President Trump in particular wants to look because he now owns Afghanistan, he now owns this war, he wants to look like he knows what he's doing.

So on the tactical side of the coin, he wants enough troops over there to make it look as if the Taliban are losing territory, maybe they're being compelled to political talks and so forth. I mean, after all Donald Trump's got is about three-and-some-change years left in the White House by anyone's sane reasoning. So that's all he's gotta do is survive that time, and he can leave the White House and he won't have owned the war to an extent that it looks really bad for him.

The bigger strategic situation, which you just suggested, I discussed with Paul Jay, is I don't think we're gonna leave Afghanistan anytime soon. And this is just the camel's nose under the tent, so to speak; although, we've been doing that for 16 years. We're gonna stay there for 50 years or longer.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Larry, I thank you so much for joining us today. And I know you have to leave us, you're on your way elsewhere. So I thank you so much for joining us with such short notice today.

LARRY WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

The press watchdog is facing growing public pressure to launch an immediate inquiry into "press racism", with campaigners saying British newspapers are contributingto a "climate of hostility" towards migrants, refugees, and Muslims.

Almost 4,000 people have signed an online petition calling on the Independent Press Standards Organisation to look into allegations of discriminatory reporting practices.

"Something is clearly going very wrong when newspapers can demonise entire cross sections of society without worrying about any consequences," campaign group Global Justice Now, which launched the petition, wrote on its website.

The petition follows widespread condemnation of a recent column on Brexit and grooming gangs by The Sun's former political editor Trevor Kavanagh that referred to "The Muslim Problem".

Earlier this month, the National Union of Journalists called on IPSO to investigate "the prevalence of Islamophobia, racism and hatred espoused in the British press".

The NUJ's code of conduct for journalists states:

A journalist produces no material likely to lead to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age, gender, race, colour, creed, legal status, disability, marital status, or sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, Article 12 of IPSO's Editors' Code of Practice, which sets out the rules newspapers and magazines regulated by by the organisation have agreed to follow, states:

The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's, race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.

Chris Frost, NUJ ethics council chair, said in a statement: "Trevor Kavanagh's comments are an abuse of free speech and the press standards watchdog should accept complaints that traduce social groups in our society. Kavanagh is using the actions of a small group of individuals to place blame on a whole religion of 1.8 billion people."

In a statement, IPSO responded to Global Justice Now's petition and said on it's website no decision had been made, and wrote:

We acknowledge the concerns that this petition has raised. Should IPSO’s Board decide to launch a standards investigation on this or any subject, this would be made public, in accordance with IPSO’s commitment to transparency. At this time, no such decision has been taken.

The press watchdog, which received more that 14,000 complaints last year, went onto say board member Trevor Kavanagh "will have no involvement in the consideration or handling of the concerns raised about The Sun."

One of its recommendations was to encourage media employment of "community relations" reporters as specialist correspondents in order to improve the balance in reportage on faith and other minority affairs.

Attitudes towards Islam are believed to have worsened as a result of the London and Manchester terrorist attacks, with 42% of English people surveyed saying they are now more suspicious of Muslims, according to research by anti-racist group Hope Not Hate.

In recent times there have been other campaigns targeting newspapers, such as Stop Funding Hate, which urges businesses to pull their advertising in publications that promote division.

Richard Wilson, the director of Stop Funding Hate, told BuzzFeed News: “With experts warning that the hate in our media is fuelling hate crime on our streets, advertisers urgently need to face up to the problem of systematic, institutionalised discrimination by elements of the UK press.”

How the press lied about the little girl staying with Muslim foster parents. Here are the facts.

The tabloid press (and I include The Times and The Telegraph in that description) lied about the story of the little girl put into care with a Muslim family.Here are 10 of their worst lies – along with the real facts of the case as we know them:1) According to court documents, it was the police not the local authority (as stated by the tabloids) who decided the child should be put into foster care:

2) According to court documents, the foster family criticised by the tabloids was a temporary placement.

3) According to court documents, the child herself is from Muslim heritage and her Muslim grandmother has now been cleared by the courts to look after her. This fact is only disputed by the girl’s mother but none of this was mentioned by the tabloids as it would obviously totally destroy their narrative:

4) The temporary foster mother did not wear a veil as stated by the tabloids. She wears a hijab:

The veil in the photographs published by the Mail and other comics was photoshopped onto a stock picture of a Muslim family taking a walk in a park in Dubai:

5) According to court documents, the child’s mother has not at any time requested the foster parents be changed:

6) Tower Hamlets council have confirmed that the temporary foster parents do speak English. According to court documents, the Family Court dealing with the case has also expressed no concerns about the foster parents’ level of English. The press simply lied about that:

7) According to council foster care officials, the temporary foster parents did not ban Easter as stated by the tabloids. There is also no mention of this according to court documents by either the mother herself or the lawyers representing her. The press simply lied about that.

8) There is no evidence, apart from claims by the tabloid press, that the temporary foster parents have banned crucifixes and bacon from the home. There is also no mention of this according to court documents by either the mother herself or the lawyers representing her. The press simply lied.

9) According to court documents, it seems the child was put into temporary foster care by the police because of the mother’s alcohol and drugs problems. There was no mention of this fact by the tabloid press, presumably as it would put a question mark over the mother’s credibility and her criticism of the temporary foster parents.

10) The foster parents have been rated very highly by independent assessors, including the child’s own independent Children’s Guardian whose job is to advocate solely for the welfare of the child:

Those are the sad facts of the case. It is beyond disgusting that supposedly professional journalists would manipulate a tragic case involving a little child to further the political ends of their proprietors.The following so-called journalists are either so incompetent they got the facts wrong, or they lied. Either way, they should be sacked:

Everyone knows the news outlet serves as a virtual propaganda tool, but new research shows just how effective they are at it

Fox News Channel has been recognized since its inception in 1996, when it was established by Republican operative Roger Ailes, as a right-leaning news source. But a new study published in the American Economic Review shows just how influential the channel is when it comes to changing viewers' minds, causing them to shift to the right on political issues—and even influencing election outcomes in ways that the outlet's more liberal counterparts don't.

Researchers at Emory and Stanford universities found that watching only three minutes of Fox News coverage per week would make Democratic and centrist voters one percent more likely to vote Republican in the 2008 election.

According to the study, this means that if Fox News hadn't existed in 2004, George W. Bush would have captured nearly four fewer percentage points, making John Kerry the popular vote winner. In 2008, Barack Obama would have won in a landslide if it weren't for Fox, capturing 60 percent of the vote, with John McCain winning 6.34 percent fewer votes.

Notably, the research shows that Fox appears driven by its ability to shift its viewership to the right even more than it's guided by its bottom line. According to Vox, the study finds "that Fox isn't setting its ideology where it ought to, to maximize its viewership. It's much more conservative than is optimal from that perspective. But it's pretty close to the slant that would maximize its persuasive power—that would result in the largest rightward movement among viewers. CNN, by contrast, matched its political stances pretty closely to the viewer-maximizing point, showing less interest in operating as a political agent."

CNN and MSNBC are also not as effective at shaping viewers' opinions. "Fox is substantially better at influencing Democrats than MSNBC is at influencing Republicans," said the authors of the study. While Fox was able to convince 58 percent of Democratic viewers to vote for Bush in 2000, and persuaded sizable minorities of Democrats to vote Republican in the following two elections, MSNBC did not have the same effect on conservative viewers in the same elections.
Fox News Channel "is consistently more effective at converting viewers than is MSNBC which has corresponding estimated persuasion rates of just 16 percent, 0 percent, and 8 percent," said the study.

The study confirms earlier research done after Fox was introduced in 1996, including a 2007 report from Berkeley which found "a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000...Fox News convinced 3 to 28 percent of its viewers to vote Republican."

The newest research confirms what many critics already suspected about Fox News: that it's pushed conservative ideals and Republican agendas since its beginning, serving as a tool used by the GOP establishment to shift viewers to the right—and even swing elections.

The study did not analyze Fox's impact on the 2016 election, but according to a Pew Research poll taken in January, Fox News was the most-watched news source among Trump voters during the campaign, with 40 percent of his supporters relying on the channel for their news.